Yesterday, IBM announced beta availability of their Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 collaboration software, which includes Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 with its planned synching capabilities for email and calendar features on the iPhone. IBM is touting this as one way to make Apple’s iPhone a business tool, something 73% of users say is not the case.

While this feature is not yet enabled in the May 15th beta, it is part of the planned future release (no release date given).

IBM has worked extensively with “agile development practices using social media such as blogs and Twitter to collect and make hundreds of refinements suggested by people who want to work smarter”. These include “enhancements in the way people edit messages, work with widgets and calendars, and new options for customizing search.” Most of these features are present on the desktop software, though the iPhone has received many which were appropriate for its limited UI use.

IBM has worked previously with Nokia and Samsung to bring Lotus Notes Traveler support to more than one billion smart phone customers around the world, enabling them to manage their Lotus Notes email, calendars and contacts. IBM is currently engaged with AT&T, Spring, Verizon Wireless and Orange, and is continuing to push Lotus Notes toward further expansion. Note: Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 are required for this new functionality.

Beginning on Friday, users can visit Greenhouse.lotus.com for the Lotus Notes 8.5.1 test drive. IBM is also offering their Symphony office package (with document, spreadsheet and presentation software) for free on several OSes at Symphony.lotus.com, including Ubuntu, Windows, Red Hat, SUSE, Mac OSX and Windows. The Version 1.2 was released on February 23, 2009. Download sizes vary from 174MB to 206MB, with the developer toolkit for Linux and Windows being 62MB.

Rick’s OpinionLotus Symphony is a powerful multi-platform alternative to OpenOffice. If you’ve never given it a try, it has its roots in Lotus 1-2-3, WordPro and a combination of Freelance Graphics and FastSuite, all powerful tools previously available via the Lotus SmartSuite office bundle before being purchased by IBM.

It’s unlikely most users have been exposed to Lotus Notes and Domino unless their place of work uses it. IBM describes Lotus Notes as “An integrated desktop client option for accessing business email, calendars and applications via an IBM Lotus Domino server”. It’s is a multi-platform application with support for email, instant messaging, browsing, a notebook, a calendar, and all from a collaborative design point of view.

Apple’s recent iPhone OS 3.0 decision to use push messages, as opposed to background processes (which may do active polling), was made for battery conservation and performance reasons. This IBM software makes use of the push architecture, and is a major nod toward adopting the iPhone as a business tool. Note: iPhone 3G users will be able to upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0 for free. Previous generation iPhone users will have to pay $9.95 for the upgrade.

I don’t think that I have ever used a worse application that Lotus Bloats. It takes the crown for slow, clunky, bloaty, crashy, excessively complicated, software.

A close second place goes to Mentor Graphics schematic and PCB design software.

http://quintessens.wordpress.com Patrick Kwinten

I have no problem with IBM Lotus 8 products, there fast and robust. Just the things you are willing to pay your money for.

Qaiser Abbas

I have no problem with new release 8.5 of lotus notes. There are massive changes in email client as well as application development.

This is an excellent tool for application development for Notes, Web and BlackBerry Client. Now they have extended this to IPhone.

Keep good work going IBM Lotus Development Team.

JG

Lotus symphony is not an alternative to Open Office, IT IS Open Office with IBM logo on it.

Yes Lotus Notes might be great for application development, but it simply fails to do its main purpose well “email Client”, it is very resource intensive very, very slow. I’m a Domino admin, and it’s not any better, settings are spread all over the place, some are on the command-line only, some are in the configuration documents, some are on properties menu (which at first look seems purely informational), tabs on the property menu DO NOT have a name only an icon. When you read instruction or are getting phone support, IBM literally has to specify the “click on the third, forth tab”.

Just terrible.

http://www.ibsi-us.com Lotus Notes Support

I have been using Lotus Traveler since the day I was able to install the Traveler on my iPhone. Great product. The only thing, to make it popular IBM may need to work on a pricing for a small business and bringing the product to consumer market.